[CLUE-Talk] AOL in Negotiations to buy Redhat Linux ?????

[Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier]

On Sat, 19 Jan 2002, Dave Anselmi wrote:

> John Kennedy wrote:
>
> > What do you think about
> >
> > AOL being in Negotiations to buy Redhat Linux ?????
>
> My take is that AOL doesn't have to buy Redhat to do any of the good things
> mentioned.  A simple partnership would be adequate to get the AOL icon/software
> into Redhat, and probably even encourage Redhat to be AOL friendly.  Purchase
> means control and I'm not sure that's good news.

I'm sure any Linux distribution would be pleased to have AOL client
software -- no partnership required. Linux is already AOL-friendly,
it's the other way 'round that's the problem.

I think control is one issue -- if AOL gets into the OS business, it's
going to be to take on M$ -- they can't do that with just a partnership.
They need to have control over the direction of the distribution, and
that means ownership.

They tried partnering with Gateway to produce a Linux-based device
and it didn't work out well. More than likely because it wasn't
a major focus of either company.

Also, Red Hat has some attractive properties -- namely some embedded
projects that would be particularly useful in AOL devices. Some of
which are GPL'ed, others that aren't.

If AOL wanted to completely control everything, why not go with a
BSD-based OS instead of Linux? Almost every aspect of Red Hat's
distro is GPL'ed. Granted, if they purchase Red Hat they can take
some of the software forward under proprietary licenses, but they
can't recall the older versions.

> In the early days, AOL didn't use TCP/IP internally.  They had some
> less-than-scalable protocol and when they went on their first mareketing blitz
> and signed up way more customers than expected, the system crawled (anyone
> remember that?)  Add their purchase of Netscape and I don't think they're
> planning good stuff.

They fumbled Netscape, but by the time they bought 'em they were
already in deep trouble. I think that the purchase of Netscape
was to keep it on life-support as a threat to Microsoft, something
they could trot out during negotiations to keep the icon on
the desktop.

This might be the same deal, or they might finally have realized
that the only way to keep Microsoft from eating their lunch as
an ISP is to fight fire with fire and start encroaching on
Microsoft's home turf.

Again, I don't see this as a Bad Thing for Linux overall. Even if
they bought Red Hat just to close the company, there are several
other distros just as good -- if not better -- to take up the slack.
(No pun intended...)

Zonker
--
Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier -=- jbrockmeier at earthlink.net
http://www.DissociatedPress.net/
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